Background and career
John Wright Hickenlooper Jr. ( HIK-ən-loop-ər; born February 7, 1952) is an American politician, geologist, and businessman serving as the junior United States senator from Colorado since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 42nd governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019 and as the 43rd mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011. Born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, Hickenlooper is a graduate of Wesleyan University. After a career as a petroleum geologist, in 1988 he co-founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company, one of the first brewpubs in the U.S. Hickenlooper was elected the 43rd mayor of Denver in 2003, serving two terms. In 2005, TIME named him one of America's five best big-city mayors. After incumbent governor Bill Ritter said that he would not seek reelection, Hickenlooper ran for governor in 2010, winning the Democratic primary uncontested and defeating Constitution Party nominee Tom Tancredo and Republican Party nominee Dan Maes with 51% of the vote. He was reelected in 2014 with 49% of the vote, defeating Republican Bob Beauprez. As governor, he introduced universal background checks and banned high-capacity magazines in the wake of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting. He expanded Medicaid under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, halving the rate of uninsured people in the state. Having initially opposed marijuana legalization, he has gradually come to support it. He sought the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2019 but dropped out before primaries were held. He subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate, winning the Democratic nomination and the general election, defeating incumbent Republican Cory Gardner. At 68, Hickenlooper became the oldest first-term senator to represent Colorado.
Hickenlooper was born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, a Main Line suburb of Philadelphia. He is the son of Anne Doughten (née Morris) Kennedy and John Wright Hickenlooper. His great-grandfather Andrew Hickenlooper was a Union general, and his grandfather Smith Hickenlooper was a United States federal judge. A cousin, Bourke B. Hickenlooper, a Republican known as "Hick", was governor of Iowa from 1943 to 1945 and a U.S. senator from Iowa from 1945 to 1969. Hickenlooper was raised by his mother from a young age after his father's death. He is a 1970 graduate of The Haverford School, an independent boys school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where he was a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. New York magazine reported that at this time his heroes were Neil Young, Ray Davies, and Gordie Howe, and that his pet peeves were violence and "beer boys." Hickenlooper attended Wesleyan University, where he received a B.A. in English in 1974 and a master's degree in geology in 1980. He recounted first smoking pot when he was 16 and using lithium carbonate capsules to go through with his final exam. In 1989, Hickenlooper was arrested in Denver for "driving while impaired" and did community service. Hickenlooper worked as a geologist in Colorado for Buckhorn Petroleum in the early 1980s. When Buckhorn was sold, Hickenlooper was laid off in 1986. He and five business partners opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company brewpub in October 1988 after raising startup funds from dozens of friends and family along with a Denver economic development office loan. The Wynkoop was one of the nation's first brewpubs. By 1996, Westword reported that Denver had more brewpubs per capita than any other city. Hickenlooper claims his restaurant was the first in Colorado to offer a designated driver program.
In 2003, Hickenlooper ran for mayor of Denver. Campaigning on his business experience, he developed a series of creative television ads that separated him from the rest of the crowded field, including one in which he addressed unhappiness over a recent increase in parking rates by walking the streets to "feed" meters. He won the election and in July 2003 he took office as Denver's 43rd mayor. Time named him one of America's five best big-city mayors in 2005. On taking office, Hickenlooper inherited a "$70 million budget deficit, the worst in city history", which he was able to eliminate in his first term "without major service cuts or layoffs", according to Time. He won bipartisan support for a multibillion-dollar mass public transit project, intended in part to attract investment and funded by a voter-approved sales tax increase. In 2003, Hickenlooper announced a ten-year plan to end homelessness in Denver, citing it as one of the issues that prompted him to run for mayor. 280 U.S. cities announced similar plans. The effort did not end homelessness in Denver, and in 2015 Denver's city auditor "released a scathing audit faulting the plan's implementation." The head of the agency responsible defended the program, saying it was "still housing 300–400 people a month in varying ways", while Hickenlooper argued that the point of such an ambitious target was to focus attention and resources on the problem. In his governor's budget request for 2017–18, he asked lawmakers to allocate $12.3 million from taxes on marijuana to building homes for chronically homeless people. Hickenlooper established the Denver Scholarship Foundation, providing needs-based college scholarships to high school graduates. In May 2007, Hickenlooper was reelected with 88% of the vote. He resigned as mayor just before his inauguration as governor.
Hickenlooper was an executive member of the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee and helped lead the successful campaign for Denver to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which was also the centennial anniversary of the city's hosting of the 1908 Democratic National Convention. In a controversial move decried by critics as breaching partisan ethics, the Hickenlooper administration arranged for the DNC host committee, a private nonprofit organization, to get untaxed fuel from Denver city-owned pumps, saving them $0.404 per US gallon ($0.107/L). Once the arrangement came to light, the host committee agreed to pay taxes on the fuel already consumed and on all future fuel purchases. Also, Coors Brewing Company, based in Golden, Colorado, used "waste beer" to provide the ethanol to power a fleet of FlexFuel vehicles used during the convention.
Hickenlooper was viewed as a possible contender for governor of Colorado in the November 2006 election to replace term-limited Republican governor Bill Owens. Despite a "Draft Hick" campaign, he announced on February 6, 2006, that he would not run for governor. Later, he supported Democratic candidate Bill Ritter, Denver's former district attorney, who was subsequently elected. After Ritter announced on January 6, 2010, that he would step down at the end of his term, Hickenlooper was cited as a potential candidate for governor. He said that if Salazar mounted a bid for governor, he would likely not challenge him in a Democratic primary. On January 7, 2010, Salazar confirmed that he would not run for governor in 2010 and endorsed Hickenlooper. On January 12, 2010, media outlets reported that Hickenlooper would begin a campaign for governor. On August 5, 2010, he selected CSU-Pueblo president Joseph A. Garcia as his running mate. Hickenlooper was elected with 51% of the vote, ahead of former congressman Tom Tancredo, running on the American Constitution Party ticket, who finished with 36.4% of the vote.
Hickenlooper won a tightly contested gubernatorial election with 49% of the vote to Republican businessman and former congressman Bob Beauprez's 46%.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
